


Terezi’s long hair: WH4T DO3S 1T M34N?!

by SaltinesAndPeanutButter



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Analysis, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23044615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltinesAndPeanutButter/pseuds/SaltinesAndPeanutButter
Summary: Who is Terezi Pyrope in Homestuck^2?
Kudos: 6





	Terezi’s long hair: WH4T DO3S 1T M34N?!

Terezi has long hair now. What does it mean?

It may seem fruitless to analyze such a seemingly small detail, and while I heavily dislike the epilogues and HS2, I like to think that the writers are smart people.

Before I get started with anything else, we have to acknowledge how much Terezi now resembles Latula. It’s truly uncanny, down to the swoop of the long portion of her hair at the back. They’re also both wearing red heeled shoes.

Another theme we must acknowledge with regards to both Pyropes is the theme of “coolness.” Terezi, like pretty much every Homestuck character, has both an outer self and an inner self. Terezi feigns a personality of chaos and quirkiness (which are both significant aspects to her character, certainly) which plays well off of Dave’s facade of nonchalance in throughout Homestuck. However, much like Dave’s aloof exterior, Terezi’s chaotic exterior is false as well. 

Similarly, Latula’s exterior of being a radical 90s skater cool girl is false. This is very obviously revealed to be the case during an interaction with Porrim in openbound where Porrim tells her she can drop the act since it’s just them. Latula also makes a mention of some type of medication during this exchange, which one can only assume is for a mental illness, likely anxiety or depression.

Latula also embodies a uniquely trollian cultural ideal- successful bisexuality. Her and Porrim have canonically slept together, and she’s in a seemingly fulfilling relationship with Mituna. 

This brings me to the logical end of the cool girl character archetype, as was brilliantly explained in _Gone Girl:_

_[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o4heKCLeTs](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D0o4heKCLeTs&t=YWU1MTc5MzNhN2EyNTgzZDljMzFjZDMzZTgxYTdjNzdjN2NkYmFlNixWMEhXVzhvVQ%3D%3D&b=t%3Av3AbuQg7v_-TxzZfLlTffA&p=https%3A%2F%2Fechidna-auxiliatrix.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F611866446649245696%2Fterezis-long-hair-wh4t-do3s-1t-m34n&m=1)  
_

Why is this relevant? Well, it’s the archetype that Terezi embodies throughout Homestuck to fill the hole in her heart left by Vriska. This is who she tries to be, and perhaps more importantly, who the fandom flanderizes her into being. To much of the fanbase, Terezi is little more than a cool girl/manic pixie dream girl to make a boy (usually Karkat or Dave [ironic considering the fact that davekat is undeniably canon by the time meteorstuck rolls around]) happier.

Throughout acts 5 and 6, Terezi pursues a few relationships with boys (Karkat, Dave, Gamzee, and John) to varying degrees of success. With Karkat and Dave it fails to progress past coy flirting, which she really only started to fill the void left by Vriska’s absence. Regardless of whether or not you consider Terezi to be bi, pan, ply, lesbian, aroace, or whatever else, her relationships with boys throughout Homestuck _always_ fail. This finally culminates with Gamzee violently beating her to death.

In [S] Terezi: Remem8er, Hussie gives us a form of vrisrezi closure. Ghost Terezi, the same one who Gamzee beat to death, is reunited with Vriska’s ghost. In this flash, Terezi, or at least one version of her, is finally happy because she’s reunited with Vriska. However, the alive Terezi who we see in Collide, Act 8, The Snapd8s, The Epilogues, and HS2, is _not_ happy. This is precisely because she’s not with Vriska. She searches time and space for Vriska but never finds her.

When John finds her in Meat, she’s emaciated and starving. There’s no way in hell that I’m gonna reread this scene again so hopefully my memory is serving me correctly for this next part. Although John was the recipient of some very minor blackrom advances from Terezi, it never went any further than that and John was wholly disinterested. However, in meat, John begins to find this starving half-dead Terezi sexually appealing. The language used in this scene emphasized how strange and uncomfy this was- even so, Terezi still manages to put on the veneer of playful quirkiness for John, the boy-turned-man protag and they have sex.

In response to heartbreak and isolation, Terezi becomes promiscuous- at first romantically and later sexually. In contrast, in similar circumstances Kanaya is shown to isolate and withdraw (I might write another post about this in the future).

Cut to HS2. Terezi has made very little mention of Vriska, who in the meat timeline died a gruesome, tragic death at age 16. In the first HS2 upd8, Terezi was once again adopting the veneer of playful flirtatiousness, this time with Dirk, a gay man. Terezi likely knows this on some level, and the fact that she even made an attempt says a lot about her mental state on the Theseus. 

It’s interesting to note that at this point Terezi is older than Latula ever was (23 vs. 19). Terezi has had more time to fully transform into this archetype, more than Latula ever did. This is, of course, made all the more tragic when one remembers that Latula was always going to be permanently 19, while Terezi had many more years of natural mental maturing she was able to go through.

We didn’t get a look at Terezi’s appearance until a recent upd8, and the change is striking. Gone is the teenage girl who donned crocs and plain, baggy clothes. Now, Terezi’s design is full of traditionally feminine signifiers: long hair, high-heels, and fit and flair pants. This drastic change in appearance emphasizes how far Terezi has dug herself into the cool girl hole, which is also the grave of who Terezi Pyrope is underneath this facade. Terezi has _become_ the cool girl, and in doing so, she has lost herself, because she is not herself; not without Vriska.


End file.
